aligning profit and environmental sustainability

The World Resources Institute’s Sustainability Initiative seeks to align the Institute’s business practices with its mission. Walking the talk on sustainability, a new report discloses our 2012 GHG inventory results and discusses GHG reduction projects and other sustainability projects completed in the last year.

When President Barack Obama announced the country’s first national climate strategy, many people wondered what it would mean across the nation. Yet, the strategy may carry even more significant implications overseas.

The plan restricts U.S. government funding for most international coal projects. This policy could significantly affect energy producers and public and private investors around the globe.

Over the past month, we’ve discussed some of the key barriers that prevent companies from truly integrating sustainability considerations into their long-term strategies. Countless companies across the world struggle with these obstacles, such as: capital budgeting processes that fail to account for sustainability initiatives’ benefits; financial teams whose goals don’t align with those of the sustainability teams; and uncertainty about how to implement metrics that properly account for external environmental costs.

A handful of companies, however, are starting to identify effective ways to break these barriers down. Johnson & Johnson now allocates $40 million a year to a special fund that directs capital to greenhouse gas reduction projects, helping to lighten its environmental footprint while proving these projects generate good returns. AkzoNobel and Alcoa have elevated the role of the Chief Sustainability Officer in capital budgeting decisions to ensure the company is spending money to achieve financial and environmental results. And Natura is accounting for the environmental impacts of its suppliers and including those costs in its supplier selection process.

David Roberts at Grist, the online environmental news organization, commented on Twitter last week that “people talk about ‘externalities’ like they are just bad vibes or something. But that money is real money. Those costs are real costs.” How real is that money? Dr. Pavan Sukhdev, author of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity and Corporation 2020, claims that these “externalities”—or costs to society from carbon emissions, water use, pollutants, and other byproducts of business activities—are more than $2 trillion.

Putting a financial value on these environmental costs can help businesses make better informed decisions about how they manage their environmental risk. Not all companies recognize this—and even fewer actually know how to value these externalities correctly. But a few corporations are starting to show us the way.

A large, multi-national company likely spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on new projects. How these projects are designed, constructed, and operated clearly impacts costs in the short-term, but also poses huge implications for a company’s “sustainability footprint” in the long-term.

A major challenge is that most corporate sustainability experts within a business are not involved in capital budget requests at the outset. A company’s financial leaders make investment decisions with upfront costs and projected revenues in the front of their minds. They are far less likely to take into account a project’s potential environmental risks and benefits. Not coordinating financial and sustainability decisions can lead to projects that are cost-efficient to build today, but may not hold up to sustainability pressures over their lifetime. For example, a company might invest in a factory that is inexpensive to build, but then realize that it’s in a location that locks them into buying only fossil fuel-based energy sources.

As companies tackle environmental sustainability initiatives—such as developing a climate change strategy—early steps involve getting the CEO on board and committing to public goals. But the process doesn’t stop there. In fact, that’s only the beginning. Companies also need to find the money to implement projects and make good on the promised goals—all while delivering financial results.

Finding the Money: A Case Study from Johnson & Johnson

Finding the funds for environmental sustainability initiatives can be a tall order, especially since many companies’ sustainability decisions are made separately from its financial ones. Johnson & Johnson experienced this conundrum firsthand. Back in 2004, the company had a public greenhouse gas reduction target, but was not on track to reach it. Although the emission-reduction projects it identified could save energy and operating costs, managers were having difficulty getting approval for the capital they needed. Core business priorities like new product development were competing with the money the company had earmarked for its sustainability efforts.

Managers, therefore, decided to re-think the way the company allocates internal capital. Johnson & Johnson started putting aside $40 million each year for “win-win” projects—greenhouse gas (GHG)-reduction initiatives that also reduce operating expenses, such as solar photovoltaics. Projects like these sometimes require more upfront capital, but benefit from more predictable returns and lower operating costs than conventional energy systems. The strategy reduces the company’s risk exposure over time and lowers its operating budget.

Fast forward to today and this approach has enabled Johnson & Johnson to reduce its GHG emissions by more than 138,000 metric tons through projects that have an average return of 19 percent. This emissions-reduction is equivalent to the electricity use of approximately 21,000 homes. The company met its initial GHG-reduction target in 2010 and renewed its commitment with a new 20 percent absolute reduction target by 2015.

This is Part One of a five-part blog series, “Aligning Profit and Environmental Sustainability.” Each installment will offer solutions for businesses to better integrate environmental sustainability into their everyday operations. Look for these posts every Thursday for the next four weeks.

Implementing corporate environmental sustainability strategies is increasingly becoming standard practice. For example, more than 300 of the S&P 500 report their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories each year to the Carbon Disclosure Project, and companies from the Fortune 100 and S&P Global 100 are investing billions of dollars to reach renewable energy procurement targets. Some companies are going further and taking steps to reduce the environmental impact of their products, services, and supply chains.

Despite this encouraging progress, a confluence of global environmental challenges is putting more pressure on corporate environmental sustainability strategies to get to scale quickly. Not enough global businesses have integrated environmental sustainability into their long-term decision making. And, as it stands today, existing practices are not enough to protect the natural resources that society and businesses depend on.

WRI examines this gap between existing corporate sustainability practices and the environmental protection needed for the 21st century in our new report, Aligning Profit and Environmental Sustainability: Stories from Industry. We interviewed sustainability managers from AkzoNobel, Alcoa, Citi, Greif, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Natura, and Siemens to better understand why strategies that are good for both business and the planet are not getting to scale.

We identified four barriers in these discussions, as well as ways companies can overcome them:

As another year begins, big business will continue falling well short of taking the leadership role on the sustainability the world urgently needs. While many chief executives now publicly identify sustainability as a key issue for their companies, walking the talk is proving more elusive.

Successful bosses do not procrastinate. So why are boardrooms dragging their feet as sustainability challenges that have an impact on the private sector mount? As an observer of business trends for two decades, I see two interlinked problems hindering progress: first, corporate failure to embed sustainability into core business strategy, treating it instead as a standalone issue. And second, the lack of tools that allow corporations to make this leap in their day-to-day operations.

Effects of Policy on the Market for Building Energy Efficiency Technologies

As governments around the world devise policies to reduce energy consumption and GHGs, and minimize dependence on foreign sources of energy, they are increasingly focusing on technologies that can improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Insulation, lighting, and building controls are the...